Grand Prairie police searching for attempted child abductor

Police continued searching Sunday for a man who tried to snatch a child from a grocery cart in a Kroger parking lot.

The incident occurred about 6 p.m. Wednesday at a Kroger store in the 300 block of East Pioneer Parkway on Wednesday.

The mother reported that an unknown Hispanic man approached and attempted to take the cart with her infant child seated inside, police said.

In an interview with Fox4, the mother, Victoria Edwards, said she had turned away from the basket momentarily to turn on her car’s air conditioner.

“And as I go to cut the AC on, my son yells that someone’s trying to take the baby,” Edwards told the TV station. She said she turned around and grabbed the basket. “I’m screaming, ‘Let the basket go! Let my baby go. Let her go! Let everything go, and get out of here!

“My first thought,” she added, “is if I let this buggy go, she’s gone.”

Police said man gave up and jumped into the passenger side of an older black Dodge Ram four-door truck with tinted windows, a chrome grille and an “unreadable paper license plate,” and fled.

The driver of the truck, also a Hispanic man, was about 40 years old, according to a police statement.

The suspect was described as heavy-set, 50 to 60 years old, wearing khaki pants and a black polo shirt, and having a salt-and-pepper mustache, dark, comb-over-style hair and a mole under his left eye.

Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest. Crime Stoppers can be reached at (972) 988-8477 or online at www.GPCrimeStoppers.org.

Security camera photo of what police believe to be the getaway vehicle of a suspect in an attempted child abduction Wednesday, July 19. from a Grand Prairie Kroger parking lot. Police described the vehicle as an older black Dodge Ram four-door truck with tinted windows, a chrome grille, and an unreadable paper license plate. Kroger security camera image/Grand Prairie Police Department

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